The U.S. Navy selected Lockheed Martin's COMBATSS-21 as the combat management
system for the Navy's frigate ship program. COMBATSS-21 is the combat
management system in operation on the Freedom variant Littoral Combat
Ship (LCS). The five-year contract, which is worth up to $79.5 million,
covers fiscal years 2016-2021.

COMBATSS-21
console. COMBATSS-21
is based on a common open architecture combat systems approach to U.S.
Navy deployed cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and now frigates.
Picture: Lockheed Martin

COMBATSS-21 (COMponent-BAsed Total-Ship System--21st
Century) is built from the Aegis Common Source Library (CSL), and shares
a pedigree with the Aegis Baseline 9 software developed for the Aegis
cruiser and destroyer fleet, as well as international ships, the Aegis
Ashore system, LCS and the Coast Guard National Security Cutters.

"We look forward to providing this combat management system to
the frigates and potentially other platforms across the U.S. Navy, as
it will bring commonality across the fleet of surface combatants and
is a step toward realizing the vision of distributed lethality,"
said Rich Calabrese, director of Mission Systems at Lockheed Martin.
"Using the CSL enhances life-cycle affordability by reducing costs
for integration, test and certification--and delivers an open combat
system architecture in line with the Navy's objective architecture,
driving affordability and increasing interoperability across the entire
fleet."

Video
on the Freedom-class LCS Frigate variant

The CSL allows surface combatants to rapidly and affordably
integrate new capabilities across the fleet. This means that ships using
a CSL-derived combat system can incorporate new sensors, weapons and capability
upgrades to keep pace with evolving threats. The benefit of the surface
combatant CSL is that these updates become available for rollout across
other ship classes.

"We can build capability, get it into the CSL and then deploy it
in a ship class when the Navy determines the need," Calabrese said.
In this way, capability developed on a forward fit program may be applied
to ships already in service.

As the Aegis Combat System Engineering Agent, Lockheed Martin provides
modern combat management systems and conducts the entire combat system
integration life-cycle that enables navies around the world to achieve
their most critical mission objectives. Lockheed Martin has successfully
delivered and integrated Aegis and Aegis-based products on 126 platforms
in eight nations, with an additional 23 under construction or planned.
Aegis and Aegis-derived systems are in service in U.S. Navy cruisers,
destroyers, Littoral Combat Ships, Coast Guard National Security Cutters
and Aegis Ashore sites. The navies of Japan, Spain, Norway, the Republic
of Korea, and Australia have also chosen Aegis to protect their nations.

LCS Frigate
(front) compared to LCS (back). Follow this
link for more details about the Frigate.